Retirement Déjá Vus
Tuesday began with unexpected feelings of nervousness as I parked alongside the brand new assisted living building in the center of a large retirement community.
I had agreed to accompany a friend and her two adult children on a field trip to check out three retirement communities. My friend was having difficulty accepting her increasing memory and safety issues and was struggling with the the hard decision of really needing to move from her comfortable home into a retirement community for this next stage of her life. I realized as we went through the day that this trip was triggering anxiety in me but didn’t figure out what it was all about until we had returned home and I had time to process it. When planning to assist my friend in this trip I did not have a clue that this was going to trigger MY stuff! Had I known what was coming, I would have strapped on my default coping skill of humor in order to protect my TCK self and keep all of my emotions at a distance before I even entered those glass double doors.
In a blog I wrote a couple of years ago, I talked about the challenges that frequently face Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs) or the expatriate who now fits the definition of a Third Culture Adult upon completing their overseas service and returning to their home country for retirement. A key challenge that frequently comes up in discussions with other retirees, such as myself, is that the desire to continue to travel and visit new places has been curtailed or shut down due to limited budgets, decreased energy levels for ourself or our companion, or lack of a travel companion with the desire to visit our special places with their strange foods and customs. We may also be shocked or disappointed when we do visit one of our special places to discover that our memories of this special place may have become warped or the place has so changed that we no longer recognize it. As Isabel Allende states, “It has become ‘my invented country.’” These changing and challenging limitations seem to be happening more frequently as I have moved into my 70’s. So what has always defined us as TCKs - a global lifestyle - has come to a partial or complete stop.
This causes us, now in retirement, to struggle with that age old TCK question once again, “Who am I?” I feel like an outsider to even my young TCK friends as I am stuck in one country. I can no longer contribute to conversations about the country where I was raised as I have been gone too long. My information is old. I can still speak one or more languages fluently, but even there I am losing my vocabulary due to no longer being submerged in my once home culture. I still can’t define where home is to my listener’s satisfaction and I end up launching into another long story and it appears my listener is now sorry they asked that question.
As a result we may often feel like lost souls in a small canoe frantically paddling through the various currents of life, trying to find our fellow travelers once again. From time to time, we do find our footing temporarily on various shores, only to pull up anchor and set off again in search of a new adventure, a new home, or a new identity. We have stories, lives, wisdom, skills and experiences to share as we search for other travelers who want to canoe with us.
Another thing I have discovered as I go through my own journey and walk alongside my clients in my counseling practice is that when retirement hits, or creeps up on us, we find ourselves seemingly once again at the same developmental spot we were in around the ages of 28 to 35, when we slow down enough to start to think about our lives as TCKs and what happened to us to make us the way we are today. Identity issues that we shoved down into our psyche during those early adulthood years when we were moving in and out of our various worlds must either be resolved or jammed once again into the old dusty green duffel bags of emotions and memories. If they aren’t resolved they will often bloom into anger or a low-level depression or anxiety.
That fateful Tuesday, as I was exploring retirement communities with my friend, I was blindsided with a whole new set of triggers that I had not heard other retired TCKs discuss: how the need to consider a move to a retirement home can bring up very similar feelings as those experienced when as a child or adolescent one was placed in a boarding school
I got triggered that Tuesday with my friend looking at retirement communities and felt myself sliding into a very sad spot, but also overwhelmed with other emotions. I felt guilty, excited, manipulative like I had been a part of a sales team trying to convince her that this would be a good move to this beautiful environment where she could join in many opportunities in this new adventure. At the same time I had an overwhelming urge to make sure there was a back door out of the place, in case she changed her mind.
“I had to make sure there was a back door out of that place”
A few days later, it hit me why I was feeling this way. It was a deja vu experience! The statements made to my friend by the sales agent, her family and even myself sounded so familiar. Yet they took place in a completely different setting. They were so like the long buried feelings that I had experienced when my parents and I were checking out boarding schools for me to attend in this “foreign” to me country of the US when I got to my high school years, while my family would remain in the country I grew up in. (There was only one boarding school for my elementary years, so we did not have any options there to explore.) These were my observations as I listened to the sales pitch by all of us to my friend about the advantages of moving to an assisted living facility. I wonder if any other retired ATCKs can relate!
The focus was to put a positive spin on what was a sad reality underneath; she was needing to give up her home of many years and with it control of many areas of her life.
We were all evaluating the current residents - do they look happy, old, friendly, isolated, helpful, approachable, etc?
The marketing agent was focused on the sale rather than the needs of the retiree/my friend. She was not exactly honest with the retiree standing in front of her. Her goal was to make a sale, fill a bed, and gain a resident.
It is very expensive and not everyone can afford to live in this community. It was going to put the family in a tight financial spot to make it happen.
The “presenting line” was that this needed to happen in order to provide for the best care of the retiree. However, the unspoken need was to free up her adult children to continue on with their vocations even though it was definitely not what the retiree really wanted.
One of the stipulations was that my friend could only pick out a few of her favorite things to bring with her when she moved into the facility. And eventually name tags will need to be sewn on all laundry.
The retirement community was many miles away from where her family lives. They would therefore not be free to just drop in on her to see how she was doing.
Everyone had a strong opinion on what she should do and where she should go for this next stage in life, although this decision would definitely impact her the most.
Meals are at a set time, some facilities have assigned seating, some don’t. If they don’t have assigned seating, then each meal she would have to make the decision of where she would sit and not let it impact her self-esteem, for the good or bad. Meal time would be the constant reminder that she is no longer able to make many of her own decisions or able to set her own schedule.
In order to venture off campus, if she didn’t have a car or was judged to be no longer safe to drive her only option would be to ride the institution’s bus and go where they took her on their prescribed days, times and routes.
When questioned, the sales agent stated the doors to her building would be locked at a certain time in the evening. If she didn’t have a fob to get in the door after hours, she must buzz the person in charge to let her in the door. She was now too old to crawl through a window like a TCK may have done in boarding school!
As we walked down the hallways of the apartments, most of the doors were closed. The questions running through my head were, “What is going on behind the closed doors? Were the residents in tears, homesick, knitting, reading, sleeping the day away, laughing with friends, talking to their kids on the phone, lost in tv fantasy land or just staring out the window in a deep depression?”
The marketing agent kept emphasizing minor amenities which my friend didn’t really care about ....”Oh look, ice cream anytime!”...”Wow, you can come in here and paint rocks!” ….”Movies and popcorn every night with your neighbors!”....”You can hang out at the coffee bar and read the newspaper, do the crossword puzzle and eat pastries every day”, etc.” There was no mention of any peer discussion groups on how to deal with separation from family, homesickness, loneliness, adjustment to a new place, etc.
We were given an activities calendar to take home which showed the scheduled times residents were to get up, eat, go to crafts, get their hair cut, etc.
A big chunk of time was strangely spent on explaining the mail system and how she could send and receive letters from home ....”Here is your little box where we put your mail and anything we want to communicate to you.”
She and her family will eventually end up having to make a decision that they don’t want to make. And if my friend can't or won’t make a decision her adult children will have to make it for her.
To those of you who went to boarding schools, do these descriptions remind you of the move to boarding school? If so, perhaps this heads up from experience with my friend will help you be prepared with some of the extra emotions you may face when you get to this stage of life for yourself or a family member.
“Consider what can we do as retired ATCKs to help ourselves …””
Now let’s consider what can we do as ATCKs to help ourselves when we face yet another unasked for transition when we can no longer live safely in our own home.
Recognize that the process of aging for everyone is filled with difficult transitions which may impact us as ATCKs in additional unexpected ways due to childhood memories if we had a tough transition to boarding school as TCKs. If you didn’t go to boarding school, it may be another unwelcome transition that felt out of your control that pops up on you such as an unexpected needed move to another city or country or return to your passport, but foreign to you, country. For others who experienced trauma or abuse previously, as retirement enables one to slow down and have more time to think, those difficult memories and feelings may resurface if they have not been fully worked through and healed.
The transition from our own home into an assisted living community, as with any major transition, includes loss and grief. Remember that the RAFT model taught us by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken in “The Third Culture Kid” book fits this transition too. We are grieving not just the move to the perhaps new world of retirement, but a new identity AGAIN and a move into a new world once again; the world of assisted living facilities.
Establish a support system of peers where it is safe to be open about what we are experiencing and feeling in this stage of transition and loss. It’s important that we select those friends who will lovingly listen and not shame us for feeling lost again in this new stage of life. Our circle as ATCKs may look different than that of other retirees as it might include in addition to longtime friends, TCK friends and young friends.
Read resources on doing retirement well! Some of the ones that I have recently read that have helped me in negotiating this transition are:
My Go To books on retirement
- Bruce Feiler, “Life is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age.”
- Mary Pipher, “Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age.”
- Ted Kaufman & Bruce Hiland “Retiring? Your Next Chapter is about Much More Than Money.”
Stay connected to the big, wonderful world out there. We can do this by continuing to learn new things and utilize our increased free time to enjoy new interests; i.e. apps to learn a wide variety of new skills such as birding and languages, games, crafts, sports, history, etc. or volunteering in our community. One of my current activities which has helped me in this area is that when I go on my daily walk I stop and chat with whoever I meet along the way or I listen to a wide variety of podcasts on my headset. It’s also important to find ways that fit for us at this stage of life and interests to stay active in our neighborhood or community. And most importantly, we need to take the initiative to set up regular times to see our friends, whether it be around a cup of coffee or being active tourists in our new surroundings, actively introducing ourselves to our new world.
In my reflections on boarding school and assisted living facilities, I see that boarding school has already helped me in some ways to be prepared for this somewhere in the future transition by helping me to pause and look beneath the surface of what the sales agent says about the advantages of such a move and the importance of looking at other options in addition to an assisted living community. I think I would have to reclaim my boarding school title, “the clown or the quiet rebel” if I would have to move into an assisted living community! I might just get kicked out of that world!! Some retirement activities are new and some feel just like a deja vu experience.
I look forward to many pleasant retirement dèjá vus along with you. And yes, some not so pleasant ones. The challenge I leave with you is to discover how your upbringing as a Third Culture Kid better prepared you for this stage of retirement. There are many strengths, skills, and attitudes that we bring to this next transition that can indeed make us better prepared to navigate it well than those who have lived in the same place all their lives. Let’s embrace and actively utilize them to not only cope but adjust well and perhaps thrive and add some ATCK spice to the next new world we are entering into.